The Government is encountering difficulties in promoting the draft laws aimed at modifying legislation in the field of national security, state secret, public information and generally the entire legislation regarding citizens’ freedom. Political analysts feel that the suspicion displayed by the public opinion towards these draft laws lately is triggered by the Government’s hurry to impose them.
The National Defence Council (CSAT) has shed plans to establish “The Information Community,” which, according to the draft law amending the national security Law, would have placed the secret services under a common co-ordination. Given his position of National Defence Head and CSAT President, the person entitled to co-ordinate this structure should have been Romania’s President. The decision should have been made over the last weekend, when the national security Law and CSAT functioning and organising Law were scheduled to be discussed.
A few days prior the CSAT meeting, Premier Adrian Nastase argued that the so-called “Information Community” should not be established. The media saw into the Premier’s stance a potential conflict between the President and the Prime Minister, but both officials vehemently rejected the supposition.
“This is the most stupid idea journalists have ever spread,” Iliescu said, while rejecting the Information Community establishment in order to agree with Nastase’s position. Ioan Talpes, advisor to the President, stated that even if the idea to set such a body was abandoned, CSAT still maintains that secret service heads should collaborate.
The project to establish an Information Community allowing the heads of secret services to collaborate goes back a while. According to former Interior minister Constantin Dudu Ionescu, the former Government, which initiated the change of the national security law, had intended to establish this structure.
Following the British pattern, it was to be controlled by Parliament and not by a single person. Ionescu considers that a deadlock was reached because “Iliescu turned CSAT into his second Government by using the Constitution. Planning to lead this body, Iliescu entered an argument with Nastase.”